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A Samurai UNFORGIVEN?
Nordling here.
Since Westerns have appropriated many plots of samurai movies over the years, it's only right that Japan returns the favor. I guess if you want to be technical, Kurosawa's samurai movies were directly inspired by the Westerns of John Ford, so this all goes full circle, in a way. Fortunately, it's a damned good Western they're remaking - Variety is reporting that Warners Japan will be remaking Clint Eastwood's classic and Best Picture award-winning movie UNFORGIVEN as a samurai movie, with Ken Watanabe playing the Munny role.
The director will be Lee Sang-il, who directed the film VILLAIN, which won major awards at Japan's equivalent of the Oscars in 2011. Joining Watanabe in the movie will be Koichi Sato (SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO) and Akira Emoto (ZATOICHI: THE BLIND SWORDSMAN). The film, titled YURUSAREZARU MONO (Japanese for "Unforgiven") will open in Japan fall of 2013.
I love samurai movies even more than Westerns, and so for me this sounds terrific. Watanabe is a formidable actor and if anyone's going to carry off that role it will be him. The movie will be set at the same time as UNFORGIVEN - 1880's Japan, taking place at the island of Hokkaido. Watanabe will play a man, like William Munny, faced with debt who wants to collect one more bounty and retire. Unlike in UNFORGIVEN, Watanabe's wife is still alive, and an Ainu, who as a people were being forced to move from their homes by the Japanese at the time, not unlike the Native Americans.
So, gritty samurai action, a violent tale, and a remake of one of the finest Westerns ever made? I'm in.
Readers Talkback
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Watanabe's a great actor too, I'm sure it'll play well overseas.
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Try harder next time
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Aug. 20, 2012, 12:32 p.m. CST
Damn. So close to twice in one week. Also, hell yes to this movie.
by skelly
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And this remake makes perfect sense. I'm totally down with it.
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And I love samurai movies. Ticket bought for opening day,assuming it plays anything even close to wide here in the states.
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No that's Ainur. Just wanted to beat someone to the punch.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 12:40 p.m. CST
Personally I think this is a great idea. The Kurosawa Effect.
by D.Vader
The KUROSAWA EFFECT is in full effect!
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We need more Westerns getting the ol' samurai treatment. Dollars trilogy? High noon? True Grit?
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Aug. 20, 2012, 12:49 p.m. CST
I am completely behind that. Too bad Kurosawa isn't alive to make it.
by Queefer Sutherland
That would be perfect symmetry.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 12:51 p.m. CST
The plot and characters for Unforgiven work great for Samurai.
by Randy
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Aug. 20, 2012, 12:54 p.m. CST
and you didn't show a pic of Ken in the Last Samurai because....
by nephilim138
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Sounds exactly like something he would rip off. But besides that, having the wife still alive takes a lot away from the main characters arc, no?
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'We all have it coming, kid.'
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Aug. 20, 2012, 1:13 p.m. CST
I'm a huge fan of this era of Japanese history, and the period plays well into stories from the American west. I look forward to this!
by ChakaMudd
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brings it on!
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Aug. 20, 2012, 1:25 p.m. CST
Munny wasn't "faced with debt" and was a widower... so they're changing quite a bit.
by Uncle Pooky
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They just make you feel good/ mellows you out and puts you in a good state of mind...
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... was that Will Muny goes on and on about how "he's a changed man." Ned Logan gets killed, and Will takes three drags on a bottle. Boom, he's a killer again. I understand that maybe Will was not ever really as "changed" as he let on. However, I don't feel that Ned was established as being so important to Will, that his murder caused Will to switch on the barely-dormant killer inside. It's a tiny bit of displeasure with an otherwise stellar Western.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 1:35 p.m. CST
I want to hear this in Japanese: "Well, Then you shouldn't have cut up no woman, you asshole!"
by Chuck_Chuckwalla
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Aug. 20, 2012, 1:36 p.m. CST
Preaty obvious in Unforgiven that the Eastwood and Freeman characters were more than friends
by Samuel Fulmer
So that's why the "sudden" change back to a killer.
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He did it with detachment, when he shot the cowboy on the ridge, but he didn't get full-on angry until he learned Ned was killed. The alcohol didn't help, either. Munny was tired of fighting his nature at that point.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 1:57 p.m. CST
@coltigh: Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" is the samurai precursor to "Fistful of Dollars"...
by obijuanmartinez
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Aug. 20, 2012, 2:01 p.m. CST
jumpinjehosaphat, you missed the entire point of UNFORGIVEN.
by Robert Evans
Munny is living in denial, and was even doing so when his beloved wife was alive. His love for her was the thing that kept him from killing, not any desire to reform. It was out of love. If he were truly a changed man, he wouldn't have needed to say over and over again that he was a changed man.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 2:52 p.m. CST
@dontsaygay, I'm not sure the tallest building in feudal Japan would be enough for that.
by kevred
If I'm wrong, I'd love for an expert to describe how tall their buildings got.
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Only instead of set on another planet it's set on the Great Plains.... but with Samurai. Samurai Smurfs
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...based around the observation that firing a gun accurately in the heat of a gun fight required nerve. This premise is what gave the final gun fight it's impact. How can that be translated into Samurai?
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I'm sure they'll translate that into something about skill with a Katana in the heat of a fight. I think that will be much easier to translate than the whores coming up with a bunch of gold.
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Like some Final Fantasy game!
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I think the character had very few connections to humanity/humane nature. It always seemed to me that he was a haunted, broken man who held as tightly as he could to those few things that gave him some peace, and without those things - his wife and Ned, and to a lesser extent 'The Schofield Kid' (or more probably, what he represented to Munny about the hope or hopelessness of it all) - everything fell apart. So it was some of both - with those few people in his life that gave him a sense of peace and purpose, he was a 'changed man'. But only so long as they were there. With his generally alienated nature, it's no surprise that the depth of his connection to Ned wasn't emphasized, because in a sense, it doesn't matter - this is what he represented to Will, whether they only met once of had a long history. Between his small and fragile support structure falling apart, his sense of blood being on his own hands, and the resulting feeling of not having control over anything, he reverted to the one remaining thing he could do that ever made anything make sense, that ever made him feel as though he had control over anything in life. Such a wonderful film. Works as a regular old western, and also works as something deeper.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 3:08 p.m. CST
Don't forget, the epilogue of Unforgiven pretty much explains that Munny returned to his life of non-killing.
by Uncle Pooky
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Aug. 20, 2012, 3:24 p.m. CST
"I was building a dojo...I don't deserve this." "S'got nothing to do with deserve." SLIIIIICE!
by Dogmatic
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Aug. 20, 2012, 3:25 p.m. CST
I'm coming out! And nobody better throw a shruiken at me, or I'll come back and kill your wives, your children, your ancestral animals, and burn your kimodo down!
by Dogmatic
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Love it
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Aug. 20, 2012, 3:50 p.m. CST
I think there's a good movie inside WYATT EARP, dogmatic.
by Robert Evans
Its story is just a bit too broad and sweeping for its own good, so some of it feels like higher-points summarizing. But it DOES have good parts, and the performances are fantastic.
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They should be completely opposed to HACK-JOB or SCENE FOR SCENE remakes. This samurai remake sounds fucking badass.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:19 p.m. CST
Is there any possible Samurai version of a Western where you could fit in NINJAS???
by Nerd Rage
There's really not anyone you could equate with ninjas in the Old West. Disciplined mercenary-assassins who were actually farmers fighting to survive the brutal regime of their era? Anyone fit that description in the Old West?
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:21 p.m. CST
FYI - The first firearms (teppo) came to Japan via China in the second half of the 13th c.
by obijuanmartinez
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:22 p.m. CST
...and European matchlock rifles came via the Portugese in the 1540s. There are rifles in quite a few Samurai pics - "Ran" comes to mind...
by obijuanmartinez
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:23 p.m. CST
@NerdRage, Navajo warriors maybe? It's a stretch but the best I can do.
by Dogmatic
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:25 p.m. CST
The end of Yojimbo shown how you translate nerves into sword combat
by NotEnoughBiehn
Sanjuro cutting down multiple assholes while they run around in panic, because he is a battle hardened, skillful killer with steel nerves, and they're thugs at best, but mostly just punks.
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I want to see some version of that line.
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No one in the film was completely good, no one was completely bad (except the guys who cut up the whore). I have no idea what the old west was like, I wasn't there but that movie seemed to be pretty accurate in how people are in real life. Tombstone and Silverado are more fun but Unforgiven is the best.
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agree completely. Kilmer's Doc Holiday was great, but Quaid's was truly inspired. He was nearly a grinning skull. Utterly fantastic performance. Shame it doesn't seem to get as much acclaim as Kilmer's.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 4:53 p.m. CST
Unforgiven is fantastic- but I have to admit, I love it for Hackman
by angry kitty
He chewed up the scenery big time.
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Unforgiven was great. Everyone was on top form. A samurai twist could be just refreshing enough to make me love it twice.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 5:59 p.m. CST
If this were made in the USA, everyone would be up in arms that no one can come up with an original idea.
by Cornholio3000
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i think you mean "when ned was taken". will was munny's first name
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Charles Bronson...Toshiro Mifune...Ursula Andress!!! Hell Yes! You can't go wrong! Plus you get to see a true Samurai Western Mash-Up that was made wayyyyyyyy back before this became the in-thing to do.
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Next up... Japanese version of Where Eagle's Dare.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 8:27 p.m. CST
Unforgiven was unique to Eastwood, a sayonara to his Western career
by Hardboiled Wonderland
Pale Rider Part II. So unless Watanabe has done a kazillion spaghetti Samurai films, and this Unforgiven remake is a commentary on his Western career and the genre in general, then it ain't an Unforgiven movie. Also, watch the damn film, Nordling! Munny was not "in debt". He went with Ned because his wife was dead and he was tired of shoveling pig shit.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 8:30 p.m. CST
However, I love LOVE that Watanabe's wife is Ainu in this remake...
by Hardboiled Wonderland
The Ainu continue to be treated like absolute shit by the Japanese. Of course, the filmmakers could just be treating the Ainu as a token Navajo, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping they have balls to stick it up Japan's insular, racist society.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 9:07 p.m. CST
The way Munny is described in his younger isn't anything like a Samurai though...
by Ryan B
It sounds like it'll be awesome but they'll have to change some stuff. The way Munny was before his wife would probably be considered very dishonorable behavior for a samurai.
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The guerilla tactics of the small confederate group could kinda be ninja-esque. Union soldiers could represent the oppressive Samurai.
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A samurai movie about the Nakatomi palace being invaded by an army men. A lone samurai must stop them. As crazy as it sounds, it could actually be cool.
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Fucking hypocrites.
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Aug. 20, 2012, 9:59 p.m. CST
@zeus: I'll take your Red Sun (which I loved) and raise you a Yojimbo - Can't beat Nakadai's gunslinger facing off vs. Mifune's sword...
by obijuanmartinez
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I imagine is a great movie, but why not just make an original samurai movie instead of remaking something different. In that case, let's remake Black Swan but with a Dodgeball theme and The Grinch but with The Devil in a Christian community...
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Oh dear,have this offended you?Poor little fella.First posters will continue,unlike your nutsack.Stop ranting you fool,it's a game-no harm intended.
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Cheers thebige ,at least you have a sense of humour.
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Aug. 21, 2012, 11:13 a.m. CST
@chuck_chuckwalla :Though I doubt my translation will be in the film...
by ForvalakaFobic
Well, Then you shouldn't have cut up no woman, you asshole!
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The talkbacks might not let anything be posted that is not English. But here is another go:(it should be Romanized text followed by the Japanese) So nara kisama ga onna o kirisokonaubeki ja nakatta zo! そうなら貴様が女を切り損なうべきじゃなかったぞ!
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Bring it :)
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Pretty close to being black and considered unhuman. Then, when the Ainu sacrifices his life to protect the lead, it is the equivalent of Freeman's noble "sacrificial negro" schtick, and there won't be a dry eye in the house.
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"noble "sacrificial negro" schtick"? Sounds like you're obsessed with race. Ned could have been any race in Unforgiven, race didn't come into it once.
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I think the key point that comes across in the film is Munny is ashamed of his past. It haunts him. He keeps getting visions, like the drover he shot in the mouth whose teeth came out of the back of his head and he can't recall what he did to deserve to be shot when he sobered up, or his fever dream where he sees someone with his head opened up. He wants to be a changed man. He even denies his past for example when allowing it was two men he killed when they had him cornered rather than three as Ned later reminds him. Yet when Ned is killed, the only friend he seems to have had from his past (in another scene they discuss how most of his old crew feared and hated him, always worried he'd kill them for no reason), he then re-embraces, for a short while, who is he was - so when accused of killing women and children by Little Bill in the final showdown, he admits to that and 'having killed just about anything ever walked or crawled at one time'. And as the final scrolling shows, he moved to San Francisco and apparently 'prospered in dry goods', so he finally used the money from these last killings to put his past behind for good...but he knows he will pay - Little Bills tells him, before getting finally killed, "see you in hell", to which Munny replies "yep".
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